London

45 - "Go sleep on the fucking couch for all I care."

Harry

"Thanks," Liz says as she shoves me back the keys of the car I borrowed her so that she could buy some supplies for her longer stay. "Got everything I need. An air mattress, a duvet, some sheets. Care to show me your room?"

Without saying anything in reply, I walk out of the kitchen where I just finished everything up for this barbeque that will serve some good meat, fish and vegetables as some sort of last meal for my mother. I find it hard to think of it that way and have a feeling that after tonight, things might go very fast for yer. Part of me wants it to go fast since that means fewer nights spent sleeping next to Liz.

"Oh," she says when she comes to a stop behind me. "I hadn't expect it to be so small."

When I turn around to face her I can see she's not as disappointed by this arrangement as I am.

"Don't get too comfortable," I tell her.

"God, didn't we once get along?" She wonders, ignoring me as she walks past to place her stuff in the already crowded room.

There are the boxes that Alex send me, a small bed and cabinet and now there is also room for my sister apparently. Once she has her mattress out, we probably can't even walk in the room. Liz sits down on my bed, her eyes falling on the picture of Alex and I and I want to stop her, but she already has it in her hands, inspecting it closer.

"This is a cool photo," she says. "Where was it taken?"

"My birthday party."

"Was there a photobooth? That doesn't seem like something you'd do."

"This is just done with a disposable camera. No booth. And Alex bought the confetti and stuff. The party was her present to me so she went a little overboard."

"No not overboard, this is nice. So this is Alex?" Liz asks as she holds the photo even closer. Part of our faces are covered with the confetti and she must not recognize her from the one time they met.

"Yes, you met her once."

"Oh, I remember. She seemed nice. Protective over you for sure."

"She was."

"I thought," and she looks up to me, resting the photo in her lap, "I thought you broke up with her years ago?"

"I did. We got back together and broke up again. Hence the boxes. She send this."

"I didn't know that. Mother never told me. I knew you got back to Palas and stuff. Is it bad? Do you miss her?"

"I do," I admit, finding it hard to even say it out loud.

"I'm sorry."

"You could have asked about her earlier, you never reached out to me."

She sighs as she gets up to unpack, not looking me in the eye as she speaks. "You told me that you no longer considered me your sister, Harry. That hurt a lot, and you can't expect me to reach out when you think so little of me. If you wanted to keep in touch, it was up to you to apologize. Now I'm here for mother, and I still care a lot about you. I never considered you anything less than my baby brother. So I'm able to get along with you, but don't make me sound as if I did something wrong by ignoring you. You asked for it, and I went along with it because it is easier than trying to make you see that I'm still the same person and that you're no better than me. It is tiring to try and make you believe otherwise."

"Who knew you are so easy to scare away," I mumble, unsure what else to say. She has a point of course, but I don't feel like telling her she's right.